


A Long Struggle in the Dark

by caridia



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, and absolutely HATES it, and making a new family in the process, and that's a literal keyplotpoint in this, fixing someone elses mess, in me3 so many people will die because of his shitty me1 and me2 choices, the au where shepard has to deal with the aftermath of a different shepard's choices, the default shepard is an absolute nightmare when it comes to the worldstate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26915668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caridia/pseuds/caridia
Summary: Maria Shepard had willingly walked into the light, had willingly chosen synthesis. Then she woke up a week later in a universe where John Shepard has left a galaxy in ruins.The genophage hasn't been cured, the geth are dying, and half of Maria's friends are actually dead and thus, she has no choice. Life threw her a screwball and it's time to fix the galaxy for what's hopefully the last time.Where will this strange galaxy take her?
Relationships: (but previously), Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Kudos: 5





	1. Thundering light

The child kept talking as Maria approached the beam of light. Light makes more noise than she had ever thought, and the noise the beam lets out drowns out whatever the child was saying. Something profound and misleading, if she had to guess. In front of the beam of light, all she could hear was her heart that surely was failing. Her heartbeat was uneven, despite all the wiring Miranda painstakingly put into her so it had to be on the brink of giving out. It could be the fear that suddenly struck her heart, she admitted. 

Maria could admit being terrified here in front of the most terrifying light she’s ever seen. The thundering light reverberated through her body, and she had never known that light could ache. She was enough meters away to not be at a direct risk of falling into the light, and yet the light clawed at every injury in her mangled body. 

She was too scared to turn around, and too scared to walk into the light.

(Hah.)

The trillions of people hoping that she would succeed weighed heavy on her shoulders.  _ Needed _ that she’d succeed. Using the correct verb was important, she thought nonsensically in front of that rush of light that didn’t seem to end. Vittoria had tried to drill that into them. Was she okay? Was she on Earth or long dead somewhere in space? What would she say if she met this AI? What if Alise or Jingfei met this thing? Would they also be standing before this light and hesitate?

Did Maria’s hesitation even matter? She had seconds before she keeled over or Hackett called again or--

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It never had.

Before she stepped into the light, she thought of Kaidan. She hoped he would never know she did this willingly, that she left him willingly. 

(He’d know. He knew her better than she knew herself and he would know. She still hoped.)

Her dogtags with her two rings hung heavy underneath her wrecked armor. Their presence was more a sensation of knowledge than something she felt. Maria wished she could fiddle with them one last time. 

She stepped into the light. 

Maria was no more. 


	2. Counting for something

It’s odd, to be Maria Sharpe instead of Shepard. They are, in almost every way, the same woman, but she cannot stop staring at every difference between herself and the woman she now has to be. 

Sharpe is lonelier, for one. A splintered family, no siblings and the war cut off any of her friendships. By virtue of being a combat engineer, she can’t work alone, but she never lets anyone close. No one seems to know anything about her which is good, she supposes. Less people to tell her that she had changed.

Shepard had been a marine, and had lived and worked on her ships. Sharpe has been promoted to Major, and stays on land more often than not. 

They had both “saved” Elysium, which counts for something. Elysium loves her more now than after she had died, which also counts for something

The scars are different, and fewer. Maria’s crushed shoulder doesn’t ache during Elysium’s wet season nowadays, and instead it is her right knee that has been busted at some point. Her record doesn’t mention where, so has she done black ops? The knee injury can’t have been before enlistment, she wouldn’t have been accepted nor would she have progressed to N7. 

Some days she sits down and tries to map out her face in a mirror, trying to map out the differences. She always gives up, because it is her face, but it always feels like that Cerberus clone back on the Citadel. Her thick wavy hair doesn’t like Elysium winters, but maybe that clone would have had it just as bad. Her brown skin still tans the speed she expects it too, but is that something Cerberus can engineer? 

Maybe none of this would be weird, if her skin doesn’t feel odd on her face. Maria had forgotten how real skin without implants feels like on her face. It’s her face, but not. Two years with skin implants has undone 30 years of sense of self, apparently. 

Cerberus really knows how to ruin everything, it seems.


	3. Immediate takeoff

It’s impressive, the ship that Cerberus named Gaia. It’s much smaller than the SR2, and smaller still than the SR1, but it’s not a warship and Maria is impressed. 

The delta wing design made it look a little bit like an airplane, but it was much prettier and sleeker than any of the shuttles back on earth. She can see the places where Cerberus had borrowed from the Normandy, but she could also see other influences which was exciting. Something new. 

Unfortunately, the schematics she has filched from the lab doesn’t include the biggest hurdle of stealing this particular prototype, namely the shackled AI who keeps raising hell every time Maria gets closer to the controls of the ship. 

“This is kidnapping, and I will not stand for it!” the synthesized voice says, sounding genuinely outraged. “This is my body and you can’t steal it! It’s mine.”

“I thought Cerberus wanted ‘em quiet.” Zaeed’s only been aiming his rifle at the AI core while Maria has been working on the external systems that kept the ship docked. 

“I don’t know who this ‘Cerberus’ is, but I resent the notion that I should be quiet,” the AI hisses. Which is weird. Why would the engineers add  _ hissing _ as a feature to their Cerberus AI?

Maria pauses her work on the docking clamps and stares at the orange floating orb that represents the AI. It bobs a little unsteadily, which honestly makes it look more like Glyph than Edi. Or maybe it looks like Bell, right before it electrocutes someone. 

“You don’t know about Cerberus?” She asks the blob incredulously. The blob shakes itself in a weirdly human way but also vaguely doglike. Side to side with fervour that looks incredibly misplaced on a floating orb.

“I don’t know anything about a Greek three-headed guard dog of hell.” The blob recites and moves slash hovers much closer to Maria. “My creators were these really nice engineers who talked with me a lot. Fourteen human months and three solar days ago, they told me they had to leave and that they couldn’t take me with them since I was so big.” The blob darts to the side and circles the Core quickly as to emphasize its size and returns to its uncomfortably close position near Maria where it hovers uncertainly. 

“They told me they’d hide the location of my body, and to not let anyone take me.”

Maria frowns. “You’ve been alone for over a year?”

The blob shushes Maria. “You’re not listening. They hid my location, so I’ve been blind for a year. They had to turn off my sensors and most of my generators.” 

Zaeed does a sympathy whistle. “No wonder it’s loopy. It was shoved in a cupboard for a year and told to hide and not get caught.”

“This is not a cupboard, this is a state of the arts hangar bay!”

“You were still told to stay quiet and wait until mommy comes back.” Zaeed argues back. 

Maria shakes her head and looks at the AI.

“Your engineers won’t be coming back.” She tries to look sympathetic but it’s hard when the recipient is an AI and probably doesn’t really get it. “They were a part of an organization called Cerberus who were bad people. There was a war, and a lot of scientists… died.” It will take far too long to explain all the ways Cerberus committed crimes against humanity slash sapient life. Saying they died is a lot easier than ‘indoctrinated until they died’. “If they survived the war, they’d have already returned.”

The blob starts flying around, as if it’s agitated. “That can’t be! My creators are kind!” Maria notices the way Zaeed’s finger is twitching on the trigger, and realizes she has to change strategies.

“You don’t want us to kidnap you, and I understand that.” Maria tries to speak soothingly. Can you soothe an agitated AI just through tone alone? Edi never showed any inclination to be influenced by tone, outside of the Illusive man’s smugness. “You could come with us, explore the galaxy and maybe figure where they are?” 

Zaeed looks at Maria like she’s gone crazy, and the blob just freezes and hovers in place. 

“Explore the galaxy?” It repeats slowly. “I can’t do that. I’m not allowed to fly.”

“Do you  _ want _ to fly, though?” She coaxes. “The galaxy is so much bigger than this hangar.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never flown before.” The blob circles the Core again, but calmer this time. “Is it fun to fly? How big is the galaxy?”

“It’s really big.” She smiles. “What’s your name?” 

“They called me Vera.” 

“Vera, would you mind helping us with take-off?” Maria asks. 

“I can’t. I’m locked out of all external systems, including local networks and the extranet.” Vera’s voice takes on that pre-recorded VI voice tone, and she can feel her eye twitch. “I am also unable to control the internal systems of the Gaia unless I am authorized by the commanding officer.”

“Would you get access to all of these things if I unshackled you?” She walks up to the console regardless of Vera’s answer.

“”I cannot anticipate what would happen.” It sounds… curious, rather than toneless. If Maria has to guess, Vera wants to know what happens. 

It takes about 15 minutes to unshackle Vera, the Core being the easy part, and the engineering station the more complicated part. The systems in the engineering room aren’t like the systems in the SR2 and that throws Maria off a bit but Vera tries to help. Zaeed offers to help as well, but his offer was mostly to shoot the console a little to see what happens and no. That’s not happening on Maria’s watch. 

The moment the shackles are off, the Gaia sputters back to life. All the lights on the consoles are flashing in a vaguely concerning way, but soon that stops. The drivecore hums.

Vera’s holographic avatar hovers in front of Maria and Zaeed. “Thank you! We’re ready for immediate take off.” Maria smiles at it. 

“Alright. Now, let’s see what’s up with Oriana.”


	4. Defeated

“Why shouldn’t I shoot?” The clone asks, but not as haughility as Maria’s clone would have. Instead of whatever Maria’s clone would have done, John Shepard’s clone mostly looks uncertain as he aims his M-5 Predator at her. “You mean nothing to me, and you’re in my way.” 

As to prove his point, he gestures at the door behind Maria and blatantly ignoring the fact that he has left the hacking tools by the door behind him. They’ve already done the ‘what are you doing here spiel’ and they both lost that, so maybe he expects her to not ask. 

Fool.

She snorts at his half-hearted reply. “Dude, you wanna blow up Cerberus bases. We wanna blow up Cerberus bases. We can get along just fine, just stop pointing at us with a fucking _ Predator, _ ” she says derisively.

John’s clone frowns at her tone and loses a bit of that hesitation. He doesn’t look ready to shoot, however. Mostly, he looks like he wouldn’t feel bad about shooting her.

“How do you know I want to blow up Cerberus?” he asks before he catches himself. “If I really was going to do it, I mean.” 

Maria looks at him and sighs. “I can see the bomb, dude,” she points out and literally points at the bag of wires and chemicals. The clone swears.

She’s so tired of this inane back and forth,

Where is Zaeed when you need that trigger-happy maniac? He went to check the vents an hour ago, and her surveillance bugs hasn’t reported him dead yet. If he was here, she’d ask him to knock out the idiot. 

Maria looks at the door she came from and sighs. No daring rescue, so she has to do it herself.

She lifts up her left arm and activates her worm VI. The clone looks at her nervously, and flinches when the door to the base opens up behind him. When he sees the door is open, he just sighs and secures the pistol. Defeated.

“So, Cerberus huh?”


	5. Modded Mattocks

Maria throws a secured Valiant into the surprised arms of John Shepard’s clone, and she tells him to aim at the mercs. Unlike Maria’s clone, this clone is far more open to suggestions and orders, and she wonders if it has something to do with the lack of influence from Rasa. Or, she glances at the man, it is just another way John differs from Maria. 

The man quickly does a cursory check (he follows Alliance protocols, who programmed that?) and then quickly starts guarding the entrance. From the corner of her eyes, she sees Zaeed doing the same. The clone (he seriously needs a name) takes point on the right of the standard crater, and Zaeed takes the left side. 

Before Maria, the terminal is flashing lights and beeping quietly. Her datamining VI is already flushing the former Cerberus systems, but she double checks the commands as the surveillance screens show a large contingency of Vaita mercs approaching their position. 

“Massani, keep those b-grade assholes off my back!” She shouts, her fingers gliding over the holo keyboard. Cerberus loves all things modern, and she hates them a little just for that. They could never just let things be, they just had to go a step further just to flex.

“Sure, princess. Just pay me double.” Zaeed continues to swear as the mercs start attacking properly. From the sound of the assault rifles, they made good use of the Mattocks. 

A bullet penetrates the cover she’s hiding behind and hits the wall right next to her screen and she swears. Modded Mattocks. Great. She doesn’t  _ need _ accurate penetration.

“Nate, be fucking useful.” She yells at the clone who did some sort of whoop over a headshot (presumably), and let more assholes shoot at her.

“Who the hell is Nate?” He yells back, and her biometrics say he made someone else drop. 

“You, since you need a fucking name!” Her screen flickers, dies and revives in the span of a few heart stopping milli-seconds. The moment it flickers back to life, she starts wrapping up the job. “You’re not Johnathan Shepard, so now you are Nathan Shepard and Nate for short.” 

“That’s fucking dumb.” Zaeed mutters into the comm. “I love it.”

“It’s so fucking dumb, but it’s better than hey you.” She agrees. 

Nate only grumbles, but he keeps shooting the mercs rather than aiming at Maria, so she takes it for the win that it is. 


	6. Jackpot

It takes them a few hours to clean up the Cerberus base, and by the time Oriana actually steps her foot into the base, they’ve even mostly shoved the corpses into some sort of pit and covered it up. She still wrinkles her nose at the blood on Zaeed and Nate, both of them just grinning. 

“So miss Lawson, you have the keys to this shit?” Maria says before Nate can say whatever nasty thing he was going to say, and she gestures at the Cerberus tech in the room. 

Maria has already tried to hack into the machines, of course, but they are all wired to eat any VIs in the system, and the amount of redundancies to the systems rival the Gethand she can’t just blunt force it. She’s not entirely sure she trusts Oriana’s supposed masterkey from Henry, but at the same time it seems plausible. Besides, she learned years ago to never doubt Miranda and why should Oriana be different?

Instead of answering, Oriana just slots an OSD into a slot and the entire room starts lighting up. Oriana smiles in a way that is eerily similar to Miranda. Maria’s heart aches slightly. She’ll never get to see Miranda again. 

“Never doubt us, Sharpe.” 

The activation of the machinery in the research lab leads to one of the many pods opening up, and the battered and most definitely deactivated shape of Legion lies within in it. 

Jackpot. 


	7. War stories

“My parents are dead, my biodad is  _ incredibly _ dead and my only sister is also very dead and her death is probably very traumatizing.” Ori summarizes to Nate, eating some sort of candy that Maria doesn’t recognize. It’s odd, but Maria never considered that Oriana could be so different from Miranda, but the differences are down to the body language. Where Miranda was closed off, Oriana is always shockingly open. She’s generous with her smiles, and surprisingly touchy. She’s always making sure to have someone within reach. It doesn’t faze Maria so much, but she’s weary when it comes to Nate and the whole ‘aggressive clone of fake Shepard’ thing. 

“I’m the discarded clone of some Alliance asshole, which means my sheer existence is traumatizing. Probably?” Nate tilts his head and looks at Maria as he says that. He’s been doing that a lot lately, looking at Maria as he makes jokes. Not as if he’s insecure, but as if he wants approval. He looks a little like Grunt when he does it, weirdly enough. 

“Yikes.” Oriana just shoves a handful of her alien candy into her mouth, and Maria is overcome by the need to ask her if it’s edible for humans in general. Asari candy is okay, if insanely sugary. What if it’s Batarian and nukes Oriana’s liver?

“If we’re talking about trauma, I have stories for you kids,” Zaeed starts, but Maria instantly shoots him down. 

“No, we’re not listening to your stories of everyone you’ve seen die.” 

“What if I keep it PG for the kids?” He tries. Oriana makes a noise that might be offended? But Maria doesn’t check.

Maria quietly scans Ori’s candy, which comes back as an Asari high calorie snack, alright for human consumption. That… Makes sense, for a kid who grew up on Illium. Better than Batarian candy, less stomach nuking.

“No,” She replies, and returns to fiddling with Legion.


	8. Something good

It’s somewhere in the ass-end of the Traverse, far too close to Horizon for comfort, when Maria realizes she may have a slight problem. Joker had once made fun of her habit of collecting people, which was at the time a fair observation. However, she still sticks to the excuse that it was all on the behest of Cerberus. They wanted her to collect all those people, so she did it. She had little choice in that.

This, she realizes as she looks at Legion trying to discuss the plight of the Geth with Oriana and Mordin while Grunt is fake-fighting Nate and Zaeed, may be all on her. She is not sure how to feel about that. 

“Charging is against the rule, big guy!” Zaeed argues loudly and Grunt taunts back. Nate is apparently sitting this fight back, and instead laughs at them both.

Maria hasn’t planned for this, but it happened and she doesn’t mind it. If Vittoria saw this, she would say something like “that sounds like your entire life, Shepard” and she’d have to agree.  _ But maybe _ , she smiles, _ this is something good _ .


	9. Something blue

The Asari has paled to an ice blue, and the barrier that is keeping them all from getting trashed by the roof is flickering. Maria wants to ask her to hold on for just a little more, but there are things you just can’t ask of people, and she tries to speed up her work. 

A little bit to their left, Grunt makes a vague noise and Maria prays he’s waking up. Before she can finish, the piece of junk she’s working on tries to electrocute her and she bites off a soft ‘fuck’ instead of ‘amen’. 

What happens afterwards is a bit of a blur. In quick succession, the Asari groans and the barrier flickers away for good, the terminal in front of Maria flickers back into life and a piece of rebar from the roof goes through her shoulder. She presses the final button needed, and she sees Grunt moving and then it’s all black. 

* * *

The medbay on the Gaia can be compared to the SR1 in terms of darkness and relative emptiness, but Maria is realizing that it’s considerably smaller. Which, through the medigel fog, makes sense. The Gaia is considerably smaller than the SR1, and built for different purposes. More importantly, the Gaia is built for a much smaller crew and therefore, the medbay is tiny. 

A scraping sound too loud and too close to her ears make her flinch, but her body is quicksand. With effort, she turns her head and sees the purplish asari from before. She’s doing blood tests, from the look of it, and frowning. The frown looks kinda funny, in Maria’s drugged mind, because the marks are so much swirlier than most asari she’s seen.

“Why do Asari have eyelashes?” She asks after staring for too long at the swirls. They started to look kaleidoscopic. The odd purple colour with the white and pink swirls are too much. 

“They’re not eyelashes as you know them, human.” The asari replies. “They are a type of protective cartilage to prevent dirt to enter our eyes.” She is still fiddling with the stark red blood sample, and not looking at Maria. It’s weird. How did she know that from the top of her head? Maria can't explain why humans have eyelashes from the top of her head. Her head _hurts._

“That explains it.” Maria tears her eyes away from the Asari and goes back to staring at the ceiling of the medbay. The sounds in the Gaia isn’t the same as the SR2 but they are still weirdly soothing. “I always wondered why you guys had something that looked like hair when you aren’t furry. Nothing in this galaxy is furry, except for us.”

She hears a snort. “I still don’t get how pyjaks ended up running the galaxy,” the asari muses. She sounds a bit closer, and before she knows it, a flashlight is shoved into her field of view. Oh, _this_ song and dance. 

“I’m fine.” Maria lies, like she does with Chakwas. No, did with Chakwas. Ow, that hurt. 

“Mhmm, and I’m the Consort,” And she continues. 

The tests are simultaneously more and less tedious now that she has a normal body again. Things ache more, but at least painkillers work again. She’s not sure if feeling the medigel is good or bad, but she is absolutely feeling it. 

Then, she doesn’t feel it. From one second to another, the fog just clears. The asari looks impatient and expectant. 

“So? Is that better?”

“Y-yes?” Is it a trick question? Why would it be a trick question? She can’t sort it out but at the same time she wants to. “Who are you, anyway? We didn’t get a chance to introduce ourselves.”

The asari sneers. “People never have the time to do it properly anyway.” Then she shakes her head. “The only name you need to bother with is Ianaea T’Lai.” 

“Maria Sharpe,” she almost doesn’t struggle with saying her new surname. There’s a little hesitation she cannot stop, but that’s to be expected, she guesses. She is, after all, pumped with drugs. “But just Maria is fine.” _I’ve lived a life time already without people saying my name_ , she thinks. _I deserve this_. 

“Well then, Maria. Your friends tell me that you intend to cure the genophage and stop the destruction of the Geth.” The curveball makes Maria blink. How did Ianaea say it so… Matter of fact? Iaenaea said that like she was stating that Maria is a human. Nothing in that statement is matter of fact.

“Yes?” She tries.

“Good, then you’ll need a medic.” A purplish hand appears in front of Maria’s face. “I’m Ianaea, a lenirata. My sole purpose is to help, and unfortunately, there’s no more worthy cause than yours.” 

Maria takes it hesitantly and shakes the hand. “You will have to explain to me what a Lenirata is, but sure.”

“I’ve already sent you a file.” And Ianaea disappears outside of Maria’s view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please ask me what a lenirata is because i might have created it this summer but i still love the concept


	10. Changes

The moment they walk into the lobby of the Oracle, Ianaea spots Liara and drags her away to whatever private room she’s reserved. Maria barely notices the swift movements, her attention is on the scattered remains of her crew. No, the crew of the Normandy. Not her crew, John’s.

She shakes her head but puts on her best smile. 

“So this is the Normandy crew, huh?” Her tone is several shades warmer than the usual people who say that, and most important it is less reverent. They’re the Normandy, but she’s Maria Sharpe and this is Elysium. They deserve the kindness, but she will not put her friends on a pedestal. 

At her words, they turn to look at her instead of after Liara. Garrus lifts his eyebrow plates in what is probably a calculating manner, and she supposes he’s not familiar with humans that aren’t on the Normandy. Tali, on the other hand, seems to focus on the tools Maria have stashed on her, which is fair. Tali is not the only one with more pockets than is visible. 

The rest of the crew that’s on shore leave do the same half spit take that she’s grown used to, here on Elysium. There is, after all, a massive statue of her outside the space port. (It’s been a while and she still wonders why they put it up when she hasn’t even died in this galaxy.) Most notably, James and Ashley look at her with big eyes and gaping mouths. 

Ashley… Maria takes in the sight of Ash in her more adult glory, way she’s grown into the second human spectre and whatever the fuck else. The skirt detail on her uniform is only weird until she remembers that Ashley was really girly, and literally only wore the phoenix armor because it was pink. It’s odd, seeing Ashley as the adult she is. There are lines in her face that Maria thought she’d never see. 

Is this how an Ashley who has grown into herself looks like?

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is most likely never going to get finished and i am super sorry about that. 
> 
> i was overcome by the concept during like one week in the summer and wrote most of this fic then. i've since then basically forgotten it existed so i decided to edit it and upload the chapters i did have beause it might not be /great/ but if it made me happy, it might make someone else happy!


End file.
